Hitherto, in the document processing field, various devices and improvements have been proposed for enabling a document image made up of electronic data to be handled like a document printed on paper.
As one of them, a document display system for displaying a document consisting of a plurality of pages on a display screen with the pages bundled is proposed in Japanese Patent Publication No. Hei. 6-1486.
The document display system is provided with a first storage for storing document image data and a second storage for storing information such as the names, attributes, etc., of the document image data. In document display processing, the document display system displays each document page on the screen in schematic form with symbols based on the information stored in the second storage for enabling the operator to perform edits for each page.
In the document display system, if the document displayed on the screen is edited for each page, the document on the screen display is edited, but the actual data (document image data) stored in the first storage is not edited. Therefore, the document image can be handled on the screen display like a document printed on paper, but edit processing is not performed for the actual data.
On the other hand, document edit systems such as wordprocessors and DTP systems enable edit processing such as moving, copying, etc., in page units, but do not display document pages in offset overlapped relation for displaying the document thickness on the display screen, and do not enable the document image to be handled on the screen display like a document printed on paper.
Thus, in conventional document processing, although documents can be handled on the screen display like those printed on paper, edit processing cannot be applied to actual data.
Therefore, edit processing for handling documents on a screen display like those printed on paper has not yet been devised; electronic data documents cannot be handled as paper documents at present.